


If Only In My Dreams

by yet_intrepid



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas, Gen, Handwaving, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Oops, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Rescue Missions, Season/Series 04, Space Christmas, Whump, mostly - Freeform, with little explanation of the actual rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 00:11:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13155015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: The team agrees that Space Christmas isn't that great with Keith off on missions with the Blade of Marmora. But it's a lot, lot worse with Keith held hostage by the Galra.





	If Only In My Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> And voila, some slightly-belated Christmas whump. It's a tropey mess, because what else would a Christmas whump fic be?
> 
> This fic is set during season 4, but it ignores the clone Shiro theory for the sake of......convenience.

Space Christmas, everyone agrees, isn’t really that great without Keith.

It’s their second Space Christmas. Shiro’s third, really, but he doesn’t bring it up. The team’s overall mood is tenuous enough without him talking about his issues, and the one day they took off training and recruiting to celebrate isn’t really helping. Actually, the only thing saving them from a complete emotional disaster at this point is Hunk’s slightly pea-colored but admittedly still gorgeous sugar cookies, of which the six of them together have consumed at least three batches.

Maybe four, at this point. Shiro doesn’t know.

There are presents, too, but after a near-explosion between Pidge and Allura about something, Shiro doesn’t know _that_ either—well. They all needed a bit of personal time, himself included. Even Lance and Hunk have snapped at each other, and they’re all thankful Coran is off arranging their next Voltron show, because he talks about nothing else lately. Shiro is tired.

After he calls time out on festivities, he takes refuge on the bridge. The castle is steady in orbit around some uninhabited planet, all ice and rings. Once, not so long ago, if someone had offered him this view, he really would’ve traded his right arm for it.

God, he used to be so dumb. Happier, but so dumb.

He settles in one of the chairs and rubs his temples against the building migraine there. Tomorrow promises to be miserable, with two shows scheduled on neighboring planets, and a migraine is the last thing he needs.

Wait. Backtrack on that. Shiro doesn’t know when he started believing in this sort of thing, but he’s not about to jinx himself. A migraine would be…unpleasant, but livable. Other things would be worse. Other things would be much, much worse.

But as the signal for an incoming transmission flashes across the screen, Shiro knows he’s already out of luck.

Take everything back, he thinks, in the split second before the video feed opens larger than life. He’s still dumb. Migraines are great. But please, please, there is no way they’ll be able to form Voltron today—

The feed blinks on. Shiro startles to his feet.

It’s not the Blade of Marmora, and it’s not any of their other allies either. It’s a Galra officer.

“Ah, Champion,” the officer begins.

“My name is Shiro,” Shiro spits back, even though his knees have gone shaky, “and I’m a paladin of Voltron. What do you want?”

The officer eyes him with disdain. “Get your commanding officer, scum.”

“I _am_ the commanding officer.” Well, Allura is also the commanding officer, but with her as one of the paladins, he does outrank in some situations. “What do you want?”

“I don’t answer to fugitive criminals,” the officer says. “If you’re the commanding officer, I want the entire crew before I give you my news.”

Shiro deliberates half a moment, then hits the button for the castle comms.

“Yellow alert,” he relays. “Yellow alert, Galra transmission. Get to the bridge. I repeat, yellow alert, get to the bridge.”

The Galra officer nods, satisfied, and says nothing as one-by-one the other paladins, unarmored, come thundering in. Lance’s mouth is full of sugar cookie and Pidge is covered in glitter.

“Aww, come on, man,” Lance complains around his cookie. “It’s Christmas. Can’t you call back tomorrow?”

“I could,” says the officer, “but you would not like it.”

“Just give us the news,” Allura snaps, her voice tight and clipped.

“Very well.” There’s a smug smile on the officer’s face, and Shiro isn’t sure if he’d rather burst through the screen to wipe it away with his fist, or cower away from it because smiles like that have never meant good things.

The officer gestures to someone left of the camera. There’s a shuffling noise, and sentries moving, and then—

Oh God, Shiro thinks. Oh God.

Because it’s Keith who stumbles into view, hands cuffed in front and at least three blasters trained on him. It’s Keith on the other side of the feed, battered already, alive in the Galra’s hands.

“Shiro,” Keith breathes, and then, “Guys, no, okay—”

For a moment, Shiro thinks that Keith’s dead body would be a better sight than this.

But no, _no,_ Shiro’s the head of Voltron. He can do something about this. He can _save_ him—

“Your friend desperately wanted to see you,” the officer goes on, still with that smug smile. And yep, breaking the guy’s teeth is definitely the better option here, Shiro decides. “And I decided—why not? Let him have this one thing before he goes into the arena.”

“No,” Keith shouts, but the naked loneliness in his eyes betrays him. “No, guys, you can’t do this, don’t give him anything!”

“Keith,” Shiro intervenes over Hunk’s rapid rambling and Pidge’s muttered curses. “Keith, calm down, we’ll figure this out—”

“No,” Keith keeps yelling, and a sentry bashes him across the face with a blaster hilt. Keith goes down hard, unable to break his fall.

“Fuck you!” Lance yells at the officer. Pidge forcibly shuts him up, stretching on tiptoe to clamp a hand over his mouth.

Shiro gathers himself. “Quiet.”

The other paladins all go still. Shiro glares at the officer. “What do you want?”

The officer jerks his head at a sentry, who drags Keith to his feet again. There’s blood from a cut along his cheekbone, and a shadow of a dark bruise already forming behind it.

“I want the lions,” the officer says, smug as ever. “All five.”

Shiro forces himself to breathe. “Or?”

“Or he goes to the arena. But first, I send him to the druids until they’ve got every last piece of intel he knows.”

Sick dread pools in Shiro’s gut. He’s trying to resist it, trying not to let anything cloud his judgment. But the lions mean the fate of the universe, and Keith—

Keith is Keith. He’s part of the team. They can’t lose him. And they can’t let the Galra break him for intel, either. That’d be a disaster in every possible way.

“Keith,” Shiro says, at a loss. He can hear the brokenness in his own voice.

Keith spits blood. Maybe a tooth, too. “Shiro,” he says. “You can’t. Don’t do it. Voltron, that’s—that’s everything.”

You are also everything, thinks Shiro, and he does not say it, because the Galra officer is there. Instead, he shakes his head and looks back at the officer.

“Keith is part of our team,” he says, firmly, “and we put team first. But not at the cost of the Galra gaining final control of the universe.”

“So,” the officer says, “you choose to sacrifice him.”

“I choose neither option,” Shiro bites out. “Fuck you. We’ll come for him, but we won’t give you the lions. We’ve got allies, and you’re not half so invincible as you think.”

The officer laughs. Allura moves to shut off the transmission, but Keith’s eyes widen in terror at the motion and Shiro reaches out a hand to stop her.

“Turn off our audio so we can talk to each other,” he says. “But leave the video on. Okay?”

“You’ll want to rethink that before long,” the officer says. Another nod to the sentry, and Keith gets shoved to his knees, his arms uncuffed just long enough to bring them around behind him. With a blaster kissing the nape of his neck, he doesn’t struggle.

“Get him secured,” the officer orders. “And let them keep watching.”

“Shiro,” Keith starts, and they hit him across the same side of the face. He flinches hard, but determinedly brings his eyes back front. “Shiro, please. I can do it. I won’t give.”

“You don’t know the druids,” Shiro says, his voice flat. Beaten. “Keith, everyone gives. There’s no way to resist.”

“I’ll find one,” Keith says. “I won’t betray you!”

Shiro shakes his head. “Allura,” he directs, “cut our audio, please.”

Allura does. They can still hear Keith, first pleading with them and then crying out as the sentries kick him—twice, three times, and Shiro remembers the relentless pain those metal feet could provide.

He turns away from the screen so Keith won’t see the dampness in his eyes. “All right, team,” he says. “We’ve got a rescue to plan.”

\----

Keith’s mouth is still full of blood. No matter how much he spits, it keeps coming, gushing from the hole where a tooth used to be. As the sentries bring out some kind of magnetic contraption and use it to weight his calves to the floor, keeping him on his knees, he tries to stay quiet. If they decide to gag him, he could choke on all this blood.

Which yeah, a quick death might be for the best, at this stage. Better than the druids, from the little Shiro said, and certainly better than Voltron ending up in the Galra’s hands.

But Keith isn’t sure he’s got it in him to engineer a way to choke on his own blood, because—much as he hates to admit it—he’s afraid. Afraid for the universe, afraid for his friends, afraid for himself. He can deal with pain, but the druids? Although Shiro rarely talks about them, Keith has gotten hints: not just physical suffering but mind control, magic, psychological pain. And if Shiro thinks there’s no way to resist—

But there’s got to be a way. There always is. He vaguely remembers Kolivan saying something about a training that the Blade of Marmora does, some kind of interrogation endurance thing. But Keith hadn’t yet been asked to learn those skills, and to be honest, he hadn’t wanted to volunteer, either.

He looks back at the video feed. The team is huddled up, their heads leaned in, and Keith swallows back the sob that surges up inside him when he notices Shiro’s arm around Pidge’s shoulders.

The sentries, who’ve been rigging something up behind him, close in. One of them grabs his cuffed arms and they must hook him to a pulley of some kind, because suddenly there’s pressure and pain and he’s bent forward as his hands are drawn up behind him.

He can’t help crying out, just a little. By the time he clamps his mouth shut on the sound, the team has already turned back towards him. Hunk’s mouth moves: Keith’s name.

“I’m okay,” Keith grits out, and then he has to spit blood again. His jaw aches wildly. “I’m okay; don’t worry—”

A knee slams into his side. Keith grunts, sways, cries out again when his stretched-back arms take his weight. But he grits his teeth and brings his eyes back front.

And then he looks away again, because the look on Shiro’s face hurts more than the blows, more than the knowledge of his own impending death.

The team huddles back together. This time, though, Pidge stays on the outside of the circle, typing furiously on her laptop. Hunk occasionally leans away from the others to talk to her; Shiro’s got his arm around Lance now. Allura looks like she’s yelling.

Keith tries not to imagine their conversation, tries not to guess at their plan. He can’t afford to get his hopes up.

When he needs to take his mind off things, Keith usually leans into sensation. At the Garrison, it was the simulator. In the desert, it was stretching and long walks and the hoverbike; in the castle, he’d had the training bot. But now—

He tries it.

Starting with the crown of his head, he moves his awareness through his body. He tries to breathe evenly, too, even though his side is stinging and sore where the sentry’s metal kneecap hit him. But he tries.

Head: aching, tender, spinning a little. Worst in the temples and at the nape of his neck.

Eyes: light still flashes bright when he shuts them. Spirals of purple and white in the dark behind his lids, a dark that seems to move. Also, pain.

Mouth: relentless pain. Blood tangles with his spit. At his tongue’s touch, the place where his tooth got knocked out screeches.

Jaw: clamped tight.

Neck: strained so he can keep his eyes up, focused on the transmission. Already cramping.

Shoulders: screaming. Like a lost toddler, maybe, or a cat looking for a fight.

He can’t go any further than that, can’t bring himself to catalogue the pain in his arms and wrists and hands and upper back. So he lets it all blend back together.

On the screen, Pidge is showing the team something on her laptop. Allura moves to hit some kind of button—the one that enlarges the display, maybe?—and Lance stops her, muttering something with his back mostly turned to the camera. Nods all around. They huddle around the laptop instead. Hunk makes some comment and Pidge grins at him, a sneaky savage grin.

Keith’s heart pokes at him a little, like it’s asking if it can get its hopes up again now. He shushes it firmly, pushes it back.

A little while later, the Galra officer leaves the room. The sentries stay, though, guns unwavering, and Keith doesn’t try anything. The magnetic clamps securing his legs are pretty unmovable, so even if he could get out of the cuffs stretching his arms backwards, forcing him to bend, he wouldn’t be able to escape. And that means that the attempt would probably just get him sent to the druids even faster.

No, Keith thinks, he’s got to stall. As long as he can wait it out, as long as he can stay here, he won’t have the chance to betray his friends.

He hopes they’re thinking the same thing. He hopes they’re changing passcodes and rendezvous points and battle plans right now. The faster they can change out the intel, the better off everyone will be when he gives.

Because Shiro thinks he’ll give, thinks there’s no way around it. And Shiro—he’s one of the most hopeful, defiant, resourceful people Keith knows. If Shiro doesn’t know a way, Keith won’t find one. Not without the specialized training.

And that’s the thing that terrifies him most. Not dying, but dying a traitor.

Keith shifts uneasily in his bindings, hoping to give his muscles a little slack, but there’s no one position that’s really better than another. But he keeps his teeth gritted and doesn’t speak, because his comfort isn’t what matters here. _Everyone in the universe has a family,_ he said to Pidge once, and everyone in the universe deserves comfort, too. And if Keith has to give up his in order to ensure they get theirs—well.

Shiro would do it. Shiro would do it over and over, endlessly.

So Keith’s going to do it too.

He spends the next hour or so counting seconds, counting breaths, counting the times he has to grab at his stupid hopeful heart and shove it back into his chest. Every time he makes it through another sixty seconds, he lets himself glance up at the feed of his team. By the time he’s done sixty minutes it feels like someone is driving knives into his shoulders. He can’t keep his breath steady anymore.

There’s motion on the screen, more than there’s been in maybe seventeen minutes. Keith isn’t sure, but he is sure that they’re all turning towards him now, and he feels vaguely embarrassed about not dealing better. He’s all sweaty, gasping, so close to crying out again, and he shouldn’t be, he should be _better than this_ —

The audio clicks back on.

“Keith!”

It’s—he can’t distinguish the voices for a minute, and then he realizes it’s because everyone is talking, the whole team, yelling on top of each other. Shiro shuts them up, makes them take turns.

Hunk first. “Hey buddy, hey, wow that looks uncomfortable. Wow. Uh, hang in there, okay? We’re planning. It’s gonna be fine. I think. Damn it, Keith, I knew it was a bad idea for you to run off with those Marmora guys. Uh, yeah. Hang in there. Don’t do anything dumb.”

Keith’s stupid heart pounds hard. No, he tells it, stop. Go back to being afraid or annoyed or guilty or whatever else it is you do. Anything that’s not this.

Then it’s Lance. “Hi, Mullet,” he says.

“Hi,” Keith grits out.

“Did you hear about the Voltron show?”

Keith quirks an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah?”

“I’m giving up my acrobatics routine for you. So, uh…feel special.”

“Thanks.” Keith isn’t sure he can manage much more talking. The effort makes him feel like he’s going to pass out, and he’s terrified the officer will come back any minute to realize what’s happening and take him away. But his heart, his dumb fucking heart, wants this too much for him to tell them to stop.

The sentries are ignoring the conversation, at least.

Allura has her hands clasped as she turns to face him. “Keith,” she says, “you’re very brave. I don’t believe you and I have always been on, well, the best of terms. But I have nothing but admiration and affection for you. Please believe me on that.”

Keith manages to smile at her, though he’s sure it looks forced, and then he gives in to the pain and lets a muffled groan escape.

“Let’s hurry, okay?” Shiro says.

Pidge steps up obediently, scratching her head like she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. Is there something sparkly in her hair, or is Keith already delusional? “We love you, you asshole,” she blurts out, and then stammers for a bit before settling on, “Merry Christmas, I guess.”

Keith blinks at her. “Christmas?”

“Yeah,” Pidge says. “We had presents for you, you know. But you didn’t come, didn’t even answer our messages. I was about to be really pissed at you.”

“Sorry,” Keith says. He spits some more blood.

“Fuck off,” says Pidge. “ _I’m_ sorry.”

“Fuck off yourself,” Keith says affectionately.

And then Shiro centers himself in front of the camera, and Keith knows the signs: an uncharacteristic flush to his face, eyes red-rimmed.

Shiro’s been crying.

The rest of the paladins look at each other. “Shiro,” Allura says, “if you don’t mind, we’ll get on with our next steps for the plan?”

Shiro nods. “Thank you.”

They troop out. Keith tries to glance over his shoulder to see if the officer is watching, but he can’t get an angle on the door.

“Keith,” Shiro says. “Keith, I’m sorry. If I hadn’t taken the Kerberos mission—”

Anger flares in Keith’s weary body. “If you hadn’t taken the Kerberos mission,” he retorts, “this would still have happened. To someone else, maybe, but it would still have happened. The Galra were already shitheads even when we didn’t know they existed, okay, and—”

“Shh,” Shiro urges. His pupils are wide with a type of fear Keith has almost never seen from him. “Please. Don’t give them any reason to take this away from us.”

Keith starts to nod, chastened, but then there’s a sound behind him, heavy feet.

It’s too late.

The officer thunders, rages. Keith barely hears him, though, because all his attention is snared by the terrified dismay on Shiro’s face, in every line of his body.

Keith gets hit some more—by the officer this time, not just the sentries. The blows tear groans out of him, jolt his body into positions that pull harder at his desperate arms. When they finally give him a break, when the yelling dies down, he blinks hard to clear the stars from his vision only to realize that he’s crying, too.

Through the tears, he can still see Shiro, standing at attention in front of the camera with a clenched jaw and hard-set eyes. Keith tries not to sob or yell.

“Keith,” Shiro says, “Keith, hey, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, okay? The rest of the team is working on the plan and I’m going to stay here with you. Right here. Hold on, okay. Remember to breathe.”

Keith obediently draws in a deep breath. It hurts and the sound of his intake shakes, but he does it.

The officer picks up yelling again. Keith tunes him out on purpose this time, because paying attention while being told that he’s a half-breed race traitor is only going to make him want to lash out, and that’s utterly unwise right now. Shiro keeps talking, guiding his breaths, and Keith does his best.

The officer gives him one last solid slap, right across the cut on his cheekbone, then beckons to the sentries.

“Get that tighter,” he orders, gesturing at the pulley that’s wrenching Keith’s arms backwards, and Keith can’t help gasping a little in terror. He almost begs, too, _please_ and _no_ threatening to spill out of him, but instead he bites down on his tongue and reminds himself that this is better than the druids. The longer he can tough it out, the better everyone’s chances are.

The sentries raise the pulley. Keith’s shoulders go white with pain, and for a minute he can’t even focus enough to see Shiro. It feels like everything is tearing.

But beyond it all, somewhere far and quiet, Shiro is saying his name.

\----

It’s almost another hour before the officer gives the order to let Keith’s arms down. By that point, Keith is screaming raggedly, and Shiro is enraged. Their plans seem to be running smoothly, at least; Shiro’s been careful to mute the castle-side audio every time one of the paladins comes to check in with him about next steps, and they seem to have things well handled. Pidge traced the broadcast within minutes, and their allies are on hand. Allura is coordinating their plan of attack with Matt and Kolivan.

Shiro wishes he were helping with the strategy, too. He hates feeling useless, standing here small and tense and distant while Keith suffers. But the team had insisted he be the one to stay, and Shiro admits it makes sense. He doubts he’d be very effective with his attention split between the planning and Keith’s pain.

When the cuffs come off, Keith screams even worse. Shiro remembers that feeling a little too vividly for his own comfort: the rush of sensation back to partly-numbed limbs. He hopes Keith will get the luxury of a few seconds of unconsciousness.

Doesn’t look like he will, though, at least not yet.

“Keith, hey,” Shiro says, for the hundredth time, as Keith curls into the fetal position with his arms tucked in. “You’re going to be okay. Okay? I know it hurts; I know it hurts like hell. You’re going to make it. I’m right here, Keith, shhh, we’re coming to get you.”

Keith peers up at him and Shiro can see him weeping, hear him sob between outcries of agony. The officer leaves him there, crumpled and rocking, and goes to answer someone on the comms. Shiro keeps talking, keeps his voice as gentle as he can.

He wants to yell. Wants to rage at the world, at the Galra. Wants, too, to offer himself up in exchange; he’s the Champion, after all, and Haggar…well. She’d certainly be pleased to see him again. But he wouldn’t trust the Galra to hold up a deal.

“Come on, Keith, breathe, okay? I know it’s bad, I know. It’ll get a little better as you wait it out. Okay? Trust me, buddy, you can make it. I know you can.”

“Shiro,” Keith whispers.

Shiro swallows at the smallness of the sound. “Yeah?”

“Can you,” Keith tries, and tries again. “Can you—distraction? Please? Just—need to think about something else.”

“Yeah, bud,” Shiro answers, doing his best to smile. “Anything particular you want to hear about?”

“Christmas,” says Keith. He closes his eyes.

“Lance can sing,” Shiro says: the first thought that comes into his head. “Between him and Hunk, I’ve learned like fifteen different Christmas songs. I never knew a lot before, uh, just wasn’t a thing I guess. But they know all the verses to everything. Hunk’s trying to make a ukulele, but I think Pidge bought something similar for him as a present. Uh—is this good? This is the sort of thing you want me to talk about?”

Keith nods. Shiro winces as he takes in his friend’s battered body again, the way he’s hugging himself, the blood, the rocking. This officer is smart, he admits grudgingly to himself. He knows exactly how to get to Shiro, how to tempt him towards surrender.

For a flicker of a moment, the only thing that keeps him from offering up the lions is the knowledge that Keith would hate that, deeply and irreversibly.

“Sing one,” Keith whispers. “Please.”

“Okay,” Shiro says. “Which one do you want?”

Keith shrugs, just a half-motion of his shoulder. “Don’t care.”

“Okay.” Shiro thinks a moment, then hums to find a pitch to start on.

_I’ll be home for Christmas;  
You can count on me—_

Keith sighs deeply. Shiro keeps his voice low; the officer is still on the comms having some kind of argument about fuel, and Shiro doesn’t want to remind him of Keith’s existence.

_Please have snow and mistletoe_  
_And presents round the tree._  
 _Christmas Eve will find me_  
 _Where the love-light gleams—_

His voice breaks, tears welling behind his eyelids.

_I’ll be home for Christmas  
If only in my dreams._

When Shiro cuts off, Keith is still crying, but he looks almost peaceful. “Thanks,” he murmurs, not opening his eyes.

“Of course,” Shiro replies. He tries to pick up humming again but his throat is too tight.

Then the officer yells into the comms, and Keith startles into alertness again. Shiro curses under his breath as the officer ends the call. Please, he thinks.

He glances at the smaller screen to the side of the video feed. Pidge is sending him messages, which are filled with abbreviations he doesn’t quite understand, but the overall impression he gathers is that Kolivan and Matt have already launched a diversionary attack on a planet near where Keith’s being held, to draw the small fighters out. The castle is almost in range, too, since the trip wasn’t long enough to require a wormhole.

Please, Shiro begs again as the officer starts to turn towards Keith. Just kill a little more time. We’re almost ready for the rescue—

And then the officer turns back, because another call is coming through. Shiro can just see the secondary screen in the back of the room pop up, can just make out robes and long white hair and a voice that freezes his mind.

“Bring the boy to me,” Haggar says.

As Keith screams in terror, as the feed cuts out, Shiro drops hard to his knees and pounds his fist against the unforgiving castle floor.

Please, he thinks. The word echoes in his empty, desperate brain.

Please.

\----

Now, Keith fights.

He doesn’t have much strength left, but when they try to get the cuffs on him, he lashes out anyway. He can’t land a useful hit on the sentries when he’s unarmed, so he goes for the officer.

Foot-stomp and elbow-jab and yes and please—

No.

One solid blow and Keith flies backwards. His shoulders smack against the wall and he falls, crumples, lies there gasping.

The sentries close in on him. Keith stays limp, letting his bodyweight do the work for him. But they wrestle him up and knock him around and get the cuffs on, and then they drag him by his arms across the room.

Keith screams again. It’s okay this time, because Shiro can’t hear it and feel guilty, and also because he’s already on his way to the druids so it’s not like he can make things any worse.

In the druids’ lab, Haggar directs the sentries to strap him to a table. Keith squints at the assistant who supervises them, who looks vaguely familiar. Is she—

No. There’s no way she’s a Blade. Keith forces his stupid hopeful heart back down again and grits his teeth as the straps tighten around his chest and legs. Haggar is setting up some kind of ritual and it looks terrifying, all glowing substances and symbols he can’t understand. Keith glances around desperately, looking for a way to escape or fight back or _something_.

Explosion.

Haggar swirls around towards the sound. And in that moment of distraction, the assistant moves. She has a knife and it’s _shnick_ and _clang_ and Keith is free, tumbling from the table, and yes and yes and—

Haggar turns back to them; the assistant stomps on something that must be a trapdoor and shoves Keith down into a tunnel. Above, there’s screaming.

He falls—

Clatters, hits every inch of his sore body against the walls—

Groans a little, unwillingly, and tries to shift mid-drop so he can land without breaking anything—

Hits. And fuck, damn, it hurts, hurts so bad that for a minute Keith can’t see anything, can’t open his eyes to see where he is, can’t even hear over the rush of his pulse in his ears. But then he forces his fingers into a fist and pushes himself onto his elbows, then his knees.

He’s behind some kind of grate, which seems to lead into a hallway. Keith considers just staying where he is. Dying there, maybe. But he’s not actually injured enough for that, because the Galra know how to build excruciating pain without killing a person, apparently, when they want to.

Keith thinks of Shiro, who survived a whole year of this, and starts inspecting a grate for a way to open it up.

As he does, his fingers snag on something that’s wedged up in the joint. Keith teases it out clumsily, then holds it to his face so he can see in the dim light that filters through the grate.

It’s a comlink.

On instinct, reckless, rash, he hits the button to turn it on.

“Two on your six, Lance—”

“Thanks Allura, I’ve got ’em! Pidge, look out—”

Pidge screams a little. Keith’s missed everyone’s screaming, he thinks hazily. It’s the universal noise of Voltron. “Nope,” she interrupts herself, “nope, never mind, all under control!”

“Hello?” Keith says, quiet in case there’s someone in the hall.

“Keith!” And then they’re all screaming, talking over each other, Hunk and Allura bickering about something Keith can’t tease out.

“Keith,” comes Shiro’s voice, desperately happy, above the rest. “Hunk’s going to come batter through the hull and get you, okay? The comlink has a tracker on it, so we know where you are.”

“Okay,” says Keith. His pulse is getting loud again, and his heart is leaping wild. _I told you so_ , it’s saying, _I told you_ —

This time, Keith lets it talk.

“Stay back from the wall,” Hunk warns, and then _slam_ and _bang_ and yes, yes, Keith’s aching fingers get the grate free just as the yellow lion’s mouth opens. Keith crawls out of the tunnel, stumbles to his feet, falls.

There are sentries and there are gunshots—

There’s more pain. There’s something sharp through his leg and there’s fear but there’s Hunk, rushing out of his lion, and he cradles Keith up in his arms and then they’re in the lion and the mouth closes and they’re gone, they’re gone—

The rest of them are still yelling over the comms, battle instructions and banter and worry and relief, as he blacks out.

\----

Shiro is asleep, sitting up against the wall, when Keith’s pod opens.

He startles at the noise, swirling to his feet with his hands in a defensive stance, before realizing what woke him. Snapping back from the panic as best he can, he rushes over in time to catch Keith, cradle him.

The weight of him in Shiro’s arms is warm, comforting, alive. Shiro is quiet a moment, just breathing, his chest moving in time with Keith’s.

“Hey there,” he says at last, when they’ve pulled back a little. “How’re you feeling?”

Keith blinks, slow. “Better,” he says. “A little dizzy. But…better.”

“Good,” says Shiro, and then, “damn, Keith.”

“I know,” Keith mutters. “I’m sorry, Shiro. I should’ve—”

“Shut up,” Shiro says, affectionately. He runs a hand through Keith’s hair. “I’m sorry, too. But what matters is you’re here. That you’re safe.”

“I worried all of you,” Keith protests. “I jeopardized Voltron.”

“The Galra jeopardized Voltron,” Shiro reminds him. “Don’t go blaming the victim, even if they’re you.”

Keith half-laughs. “I’m going to quote that at you,” he says. “And you’re going to regret it.”

Damn it. “Fine,” Shiro says. He hands Keith his red jacket, which Kolivan brought when he came by post-mission; Keith shrugs it on over the sleep-chamber suit. He tests his shoulders carefully, like he still expects agony there.

“Your tendons should be fine,” Shiro reassures him. “We got you into the pod soon enough that it should prevent any permanent damage. You’re supposed to be careful training for the next week or two, though. Take it easy.”

Keith frowns. “Kolivan won’t like that.”

“I’ve already talked to Kolivan,” Shiro says. “Actually, I suggested you stick around here while you recuperate, and he said that’d be a good idea. He thinks you’re lonely, and us—well, we’ve missed you. I’ve missed you.”

Keith ducks his head, the shy way he used to do when he and Shiro first became friends. “I’ve missed you too,” he says. “I wish I’d been here for Christmas.”

Shiro laughs. “Your wish is my command,” he teases, as he finally lets Keith out of the hug. Crossing over to the comms, he hits the button.

“Operation is go,” he intones. “Repeat, Operation Keithmas is a go.”

Keith’s eyes widen and Shiro laughs again, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to lead him to the dining room. As they approach, there’s singing and laughter; the smell of cookies drifts towards them.

“Uh,” Keith says, just before they round the corner into the room. “Shiro?”

Shiro turns to him.

“Thank you,” says Keith. “Just—thanks. I thought I was gonna die in there, and it was a lot harder than in battle. You know? It was just hard.”

“I know,” Shiro says, meeting Keith’s eyes. “And listen—you said you’d rescue me as many times as it takes, right?”

“Right,” Keith says.

“Well.” Shiro smiles softly, blinking back tears. “Same to you. Okay? It’s an honor to be here for you.”

Keith hides his head in Shiro’s shoulder and Shiro runs a hand over his back. The images still flash in his head of Keith’s body contorted, his face anguished, his blood dripping. The screams and the broken whispers are going to be in Shiro’s nightmares for a long time. But Keith did make it, just like Shiro promised, and Shiro has never before been so glad to be right.

He drops a gentle kiss on Keith’s forehead, then leads him into the dining room where Hunk is strumming his not-quite-ukulele from Pidge; Lance is talking around a pea-green cookie. Allura and Pidge are talking rapidly, comparing traditions of some kind.

Then they turn and see, and Shiro loves them all: how eager they are, how they’ve bonded. How they can face the horrors of war and still carry smiles like these. He loves Hunk’s fretting and Pidge’s playful sarcasm, Lance’s full mouth and Allura’s glitter-spangled hair. He loves how they have become each others’ home.

And as they all rush to Keith, arms outstretched, the love-light gleams on their faces.


End file.
